


hope springs eternal

by princessoftheworlds



Series: The Many Lives and Lies of Jack Harkness [5]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: 5+1 Things, Big Finish Compliant, Canon Compliant, F/M, Jack-Centric, M/M, Temporary Character Death, The Year That Never Was (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:33:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26097925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessoftheworlds/pseuds/princessoftheworlds
Summary: Five moments in his life where Jack Harkness felt utterly hopeless and one moment where he didn't.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones, Ninth Doctor/Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler
Series: The Many Lives and Lies of Jack Harkness [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1779442
Comments: 14
Kudos: 48





	hope springs eternal

**Author's Note:**

> Thank the Bloody Torchwood server for this...again. I asked for sad prompts, and Myo, Jewels, Remi, and others strung this together for me. So thank (and blame) them for the sads. 
> 
> Also, thanks to Jewels for editing! And for the title!

The day after the terrifying attack on Boeshane, Javic Thane wakes up and realizes that the sun has indeed risen, that the world didn’t end overnight, so he slips himself out of his bunk, refusing to allow his gaze to wander to the empty one where Gray once slept, and shifts through the shattered pieces of his life. 

When he doesn’t find his mother in her bedroom, he feels the first flicker of cold panic. He searches first the entire house and then the entire compound for her, even the front garden. Heart pounding in his chest, Javic races to the only other place he thinks she could be, and there he finds her, kneeling on the exact spot where Javic, Franklin, and Gray had built a bonfire and played cricket only a few nights previous, her fists dug into the sand.

“Mom?” Javic calls cautiously, kicking up clumps of sand as he approaches her. There is no indication she heard him; she barely twitches, blond hair falling in a thick curtain around her bowed head. “Mom, what are you doing out here?”

Gently, Javic places a hand on her shoulder, the tsunami of grief and guilt he’s been barely keeping at bay threatening to overwhelm him. His mother slowly turns her head to face him, and Javic inhales sharply.

“ _ Mom _ ?” he whispers, falling to his knees besides her. 

There is nothing in his mother’s eyes, no familiar happiness or love shining there, the pale blue as still as the waters of Boeshane currently are. His mother is  _ blank _ ,  _ empty _ .

When Javic wraps his thin arms around her bony shoulders, she doesn’t react. It’s like hugging a ghost, and Javic shudders, letting his defenses wall.

“I’ll fix this, Mom,” he sobs, his endless tears dampening his mother’s skin. “I’ll find Gray; I promise. I’ll fix our family.”

There is no response, and Javic only sobs harder, tightening his grip. Eventually, when the tears dry out, he carefully leads her back to the house and tucks her into bed. Then Javic curls into a ball on Gray’s bunk and cries himself to sleep. 

When they come to take Javic to the orphanage, he doesn’t cry. He obediently lets them lead him away from the house he was born in. The director commends Javic on his bravery, but Javic knows better. 

It isn’t courage that has dried out Javic’s tears. No, it very much isn’t. Instead, for the first time in Javic’s long,  _ long _ life, Javic has lost hope. 

There is no fixing this, he realizes. His father is dead, Gray is gone, and his mother is a stranger to him. But Javic will try. He will scour the universe from end to end for Gray; he won’t stop until he finds his brother. For now, however, his mother is lost to him.

Years later, when time has looped back around, a grown Javic Thane will return to Boeshane, but he will be Javic Thane no longer. His name will be Jack Harkness, and he will find his mother in her care home; he will kneel besides her and tell her stories of his life, and for the first time in over twenty years, recognition will flicker in those pale blue eyes of her, calmer than the waters of Boeshane.

Not too long after, she will die, and Jack will sob.

* * *

_ See you in hell _ , Jack tells Rose and the Doctor, and he could feel Rose’s denial and the Doctor’s gratitude when he’d kissed them moments previous, but Jack knows he’s going to die today at the hands of the Dalek. He knows he’s going to die here, in Satellite Five, and he’s okay with that, knowing he’ll die saving the Doctor and Rose, the newest loves of his otherwise worthless life. 

That doesn’t change the moment, however, when the Daleks advance on him in the narrow corridor and Jack stares down at their almost-comical eyestalks and feels his body paralyzed with fear. He’s the last defense before the Doctor, the literal last man standing.

“Doctor, you’ve got twenty seconds maximum!” he yells into his comm, futilely pumping bullets at the Daleks. Finally, his machine gun runs empty, and he tosses it aside, trading it for his pistol, but eventually, his few bullets are gone, pinging off against the Daleks. He discards the pistol too.

“ _ Exterminate _ ,” the first Dalek screeches, advancing forward.

Calm and acceptance wash over Jack, and he lifts his head defiantly and opens himself up to attack, refusing to die a coward. The Doctor and Rose made Jack a better man, and for them, he will embrace death bravely. “I kind of figure that,” he snarls.

The Dalek’s death ray strikes Jack, his entire body burning with pain, and he flies backwards. Then he feels nothing at all.

_ I bring life _ .

Seemingly moments later, Jack gasps back to life, the first breath of the endless life he’s doomed to live for eternity, and lurches forward. He scrambles on the harsh cement floor of Satellite Five and staggers to his feet, flinching away, but there are no longer any Daleks there. In fact, the entire corridor is empty, the floor covered in clumps of dust that hadn’t been there previous.

For a moment, Jack has a sneaking suspicion that he  _ died _ , but he shrugs that off. It can’t be possible; he’s clearly still alive right now. And the Daleks are gone, which means that the Doctor must have pulled some last-minute miracle rescue like he always does.

Triumphantly, Jack whoops before scooping up his pistol and machine gun. He races up to the five hundredth floor only to catch the familiar blue outline of the TARDIS pulse in place momentarily before completely fading away, its wheezing lingering in the haunting silence of the empty floor. 

The machine gun slips from Jack’s hand, clattering to the floor.

The Doctor has left Jack behind. Moments ago, Jack nearly died for him, and the Doctor left him behind. 

_ No _ , Jack thinks hurriedly,  _ that can’t be possible _ .  _ The Doctor would never leave you behind. He’s probably gone to make sure that Rose is safe, and they’ll be back any moment to pick you up. _

He waits there, slumped against the wall, for hours, clinging to that fragile hope; he eventually passes out from exhaustion and awakens, weak from hunger, hoping to catch a glimpse of the TARDIS materializing before him. It takes him  _ days _ to realize that the Doctor isn’t coming back for him, his hope smothered out like the dying sparks of a fire. Heck, the Doctor probably thinks he’s dead. It’s up to Jack to find him, and Jack’s best chance of doing that is heading down to Earth.

“You’ll find the Doctor,” Jack tells himself, and as he reaches for his vortex manipulator, he doesn’t know why it feels like he’s lying.

* * *

When the world rights itself around Jack, the faint golden glow of time travel fading away, a pit of dread forms in his stomach. This is not twenty-first century Cardiff; this is not the Plass with the gleaming water sculpture he’d seen with Rose and the Doctor where they chased a Slitheen as a mayor. No, this is the wrong time.

Jack had aimed for Cardiff in 2006, but when he checks his vortex manipulator with numb fingers, the display reads 1869. He jabs a few buttons, but it only makes a pitiful whine and sparks a bit before falling silent.

“Fuck!” yells Jack and kicks the brick alley wall behind him but only succeeds in further injuring his foot. A man dressed in ridiculous-looking trousers and a suit jacket gives him a dirty, startled look before scurrying away. 

Right. Jack squeezes the bridge of his nose, sighing. His shoulders slump down. Of course, Jack’s getting the dirty looks. He’s standing on a busy street that smells like horse feces and holding a gun that won’t be invented for thousands of thousands years, dressed in skintight leather.

First things first, he needs to find new clothing and, most definitely, some kind of pub. He needs to get drunk. This has happened before to his vortex manipulator when he’s strained it by jumping through time too far and too quickly. It just needs several hours to recharge itself, and he’ll be good to go and hugging Rose and the Doctor in no time.

Even before he thinks it, Jack knows he sounds falsely optimistic, but he still stashes the machine gun and his leather vest in the alley. It’s almost child’s play to swipe a dramatically frilly coat that makes him miss his military greatcoat off the back of a cart and a pouch of gold coins a man was carelessly letting dangle from the side of his belt.

At the nearest pub, Jack tells the barmaid to give him a tankard of their cheapest liquor, eyeing the way her corseted dress pushes her breasts up appealingly. He settles on a bench and begins to drown his sorrows.

Not even an hour ago, he’d optimistically left Silo and Malfi behind in 200,100, intent on reuniting with the Doctor and Rose and knowing that the future of humanity was in safe hands. Now, he’s briefly stuck in this backwards century where he can be shot through the heart for so much as eyeing an attractive man “in the wrong way.” He can’t wait to get out of 1869. 

Jack sits there in the pub all day, allowing himself to get drunk and then waiting to sober up. When he thinks it’s been long enough, he returns to the alley, slides his vest back on under the coat - he thinks he’ll keep it as a souvenir, and picks the machine gun back up. 

Then he flips his vortex manipulator open, types in the correct year, and prepares to disappear.

For a moment, the familiar golden swirls of time begin to glow again, and Jack can feel the warmth of his excitement travel through his body. Then abruptly, as the vortex manipulator explodes in a shower of hot sparks, the glow dissipates. Jack hisses, hastily unbuckling his vortex manipulator and rubbing at the burn on his arm.

“ _ What the fuck _ ?” he murmurs, frowning and stabbing frantically at his vortex manipulator, but it has gone dark now, dead. “ _ No no no no no _ !”

This can’t be happening! His vortex manipulator is dead, has burned out, which means that Jack is grounded in 1869 with no way of getting back to Rose and the Doctor. With no legitimate way of contacting them.

The pit of dread in Jack’s stomach has ballooned into icy horror, reaching its claw-like grip around his heart and squeezing.

Frustrated, Jack throws his vortex manipulator down to the dirt, crashes to his knees, and releases a primal devastated scream.

* * *

“ _It's good you're here. Always did have great timing. This place, it's yours. Torchwood Three_ ,” Alex told him, eyes maniacal, Lucia’s body lying lifeless across the Hub, a precise bullethole through her forehead. “ _My gift to you, Jack, for a century of service as field operative. Give this place a purpose before it's too late. Please._ ” Moments later, he pulled the trigger and fell to the cement floor, also dead.

His blood is spattered across Jack’s face. He’s since scrubbed it clean, but he can still feel Alex’s blood there.

Four hours ago, Jack had come through the cog wheel door, grinning and ready for festivities; now, he’s the lone survivor of Torchwood Three, the de facto leader.

He buries his face in his hands, inhaling sharply. “What am I going to do?” His voice is muffled by the sleeves of his greatcoat, his chest heaving as his breath begins to come in shorter and shorter bursts. “I can’t stay here...I can’t be  _ what Alex wanted me to be _ .” 

For over one hundred years, Jack had vowed to break free of Torchwood, and now that he has the chance, now that everything’s gone, he  _ can’t _ . He has this fucking city and its fucking Rift, and he has the Plass above his head where the TARDIS will likely rematerialize.

_ Twenty-first century, Jack _ , Alex’s Scottish burr echoes around his head.  _ Everything's gonna change _ .

“What does that even mean, Alex?” Jack screams, and his voice echoes through the empty Hub. His tone is desperate, words spilling out; he thinks this might be his breaking point, but he only feels numb. “You said that to me, Alex, but you never said what it  _ fucking meant _ !” He whirls around, boots scuffing against the cement floor, right where Ariana had bled out in front of him. “ _ I don’t want this _ ,  _ Alex! I never wanted any of this! I never wanted Torchwood! _ ” 

He drops to his knees, helpless like he’s kneeling next to his mother in the sand of a Boeshane beach. Tears drip down his face, leaking so copiously from his eyes that the world blurs before him.

“What do I do, Doctor?” Jack whispers to the man, to the Time Lord, who hasn’t returned for him in almost two centuries. “Will you come for me soon? Do I wait for you?” He bows his head. “Or do I rebuild Torchwood Three?”

A moment later, he snorts bitterly. Jack had started off the twentieth century as effectively Torchwood’s prisoner, and he ended it as the last man standing, just as he was the last man standing on Satellite Five. The Torchwood Institute had never treated him as anything but disposable, so he doesn’t know why he should be expected to stay, to rebuild the team.

But even as he thinks it, Jack knows what choice he’ll make. He’ll stay here in Cardiff and protect the city from the Rift and the Rift from the city, because that’s the kind of man the Doctor had taught him to be.

“Damn you, Doctor,” Jack says, shaking his head and drying his eyes with his shirt sleeve. “You must be laughing right now, somewhere in the universe on your TARDIS, with Rose by your side. You must be laughing at the man who was fool enough to fall for you.”

Jack Harkness is destined to life alone as Cardiff’s eternal guardian, and as he rises to his knees, he accepts that fact.

* * *

Strung up by his arms in chains, his entire body  _ aching _ , Jack doesn’t believe he’s ever felt this kind of pain and torture before, not in his many decades of life.

“Wakey, wakey, Captain,” a cruel voice cooes. Well-made leather shoes pad across the metal floor, their owner approaching Jack.

“What do you want?” snarls Jack, lifting his head up wearily to find the Master standing inches away, fingers wrapped around his laser screwdriver and wearing a gleeful smirk along with his designer suit. “Don’t you ever take a day off, spend the morning in bed with Mrs. Saxon? She’s delightful eye candy.” He’s so exhausted, he can’t even manage a leer.

To Jack’s disappointment - but then again, he should have expected not being able to get a rise from the Master; he never can, the Master’s smirk only widens. “Why would I?” he asks. “Not when I can spend the day playing with you, Captain Jack!” He clicks his fingers, nodding to Jack’s UNIT guards. “Bring them in.”

Bring  _ who  _ in? Jack feels a spike of alarm, praying that the Master hasn’t managed to find Martha. All hope for humanity will be lost if the Master has managed to find Martha.

Instead, the UNIT guards lead in Tish, wearing her regular maid uniform, head bowed and expression fearful, and...Ianto. Ianto Jones, scruffy and bruised-up, covered in faint new scars and wearing a dirty shirt and jeans, but he’s never looked more beautiful to Jack’s eyes, alive and glowering at the Master.

“No,” Jack barks immediately, dragging the Master’s attention back to him. “ _ No! _ Leave them alone. Whatever you want to do, do to me. Leave them  _ alone _ !”

“Nope.” The Master bounces slightly on his toes. “Choose one life to save. Mr. Ianto Jones or Ms. Tish Jones.” He chuckles lightly. “There truly are too many Joneses in the UK.”

“I’m not choosing either of them, you piece of shit excuse for a Time Lord!” Jack hisses. 

“Save her, Jack,” Ianto pleads, blue eyes wide and adamant as he glances towards Jack. There is sorrow etched on every inch of his youthful face. “Let me die.”

“Jack, no! Save him!” Tish insists, fighting against the grasp of the UNIT guards holding her. She has every bit the same determination and ferocity her sister does.

Jack watches them helplessly. He can’t choose either of them. He can’t subject either of them to death. “I can’t-”

The Master rolls his eyes. “Fine.  _ Pity _ ,  _ pity _ .” He clicks his tongue. “I’ll make your decision for you.” He steps forward, and despite Ianto’s yell, Tish’s swearing, and Jack attempting to wrench his head backwards, he mockingly ghosts a gentle hand down Jack’s cheek. “Kill Mr. Jones.”

“ _ Nonononono _ ,” Jack yells, futilely lunging forward, struggling in his chains. “ _ I will fucking kill you _ .”

“Jack,” Ianto says quietly, pale by standing tall and proud. “Jack, it’s okay. Just…” He looks momentarily stricken. “You mean a lot to me, Jack Harkness. Put the world right, will you?”

Then the UNIT guard beside him pulls the trigger, and Ianto falls, the light from his eyes dying before he even hits the ground.

Jack  _ screams _ .

* * *

It’s been a long day, perhaps one of the longest that the remaining members of Torchwood Three have had since the night the city exploded. They started the morning stun-gunning Weevils and ended the night chasing a Hoix all over town. Jack sits up in bed in Ianto’s flat and watches the other man sleep.

After spending an entire week sleeping in Jack’s narrow bed down in his bunker, Ianto had insisted that they return to his flat so that he could spend a night in his own bed; despite Jack’s chronic insomnia, he’s actually grateful. Ianto’s bedroom has a large window that overlooks the city, and on nights like tonight, with the moon hanging high in the sky like a ripe fruit and the curtains the slightest bit ajar, enough moonlight drifts inside to softly illuminate the room, allowing Jack to watch Ianto sleep.

During the day, Ianto is constantly in motion, organizing the archives, arranging logistics with the police force, hunting down whatever alien of the day, delivering Jack and Gwen coffee. He’s relentless, never takes a break no matter how much Jack instructs him too.

Ianto’s beautiful when he sleeps, handsome features illuminated by the moonlight, body slack and expression peaceful like it never is when he's awake. 

Quietly, Jack lifts his hand and gently brushes his knuckles against the soft curve of Ianto’s cheek. There’s just the slightest bit of dark stubble visible that Jack can feel scratching against his skin; Ianto didn’t exactly have time to shave this morning. He never does anymore. 

“I could have lost you today,” Jack whispers, knowing that Ianto will never hear him. “If that Weevil had been one step closer to you before I shot it, it could have torn out your throat.” He inhales sharply. “I don’t know what I would have done if it did.” He rubs his thumb along Ianto’s cheekbone. “ _ I don’t know what I would do without you _ .”

Somewhere in between his return and these last few weeks, Jack realized not too long ago, he fell hard for Ianto Jones, a twentysomething mortal Welshman with an affinity for suits and coffee, and now, Jack can’t imagine his life without Ianto. 

He knows that’s dangerous; he knows that he will fall apart when Ianto dies, because like everyone but Jack, Ianto will die one day. Yet Jack doesn’t care. 

He has months with Ianto, hopefully even years, and every moment counts. Every moment with Ianto feels like a gift, feels like the first inhale he takes when he comes back to life; in some way, Ianto has become tied to the very air in Jack’s lungs. 

_ Oh, Ianto Jones, what have you done to me _ ? he wonders, smiling softly.

Beside Jack, Ianto snuffles, drooling slightly, and then turns on his side, tugging the blanket further from Jack’s grasp. Jack only snuggles closer, spooning Ianto, nestling his head against the other man’s. He inhales the musky scent of Ianto’s sweat and presses a sweet kiss to Ianto’s exposed neck.

For the first time in a long while, Jack Harkness has hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr [here](http://princess-of-the-worlds.tumblr.com/) or on Twitter [here](https://twitter.com/rajkumarinik) to let me know how much you liked this fic or request a prompt. Also, please comment or drop a line below even if it's to telling me how you've been doing. I thrive on kudos and social interacting, especially in this day and age.


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